Mining Rigs to Large Container

[Guardsix6]

I have 10 mining rigs outside my base not that far. They all are running just fine, plenty of power.

My problem is that I cannot get them hooked into a large storage container. I have ran conveyors from the storage box and out to all the rigs in one huge loop - didn't work. I tried it the other way and ran conveyors from the last rig to each of the other nine rigs and then to the storage box - they still don't show up.

Then I tried running a conveyor from the storage box thru the wall and out to a single mining rig. This showed up as soon as the rig got powered on!

Is there a limit to how many things you can put on a conveyor feed? Need some help, please!

[Carol]

I used a mining rig for the first time today and noticed on accessing the display panel it had a tick box lower left to 'send resources to attacked box when full'. I would assume that means it needs a direct connection to storage, and presumably a loop won't work. BUT I am a newb. Hopefully one of the 'veteren' players will know better.

[RAGE]

That sounds like the good old "can't connect two grids"-bugfeature. Basically, you always have to build from beginnng to end. If you build a conveyor-pipeline, then remove one piece in the middle and then try to re-insert it again, it won't connect properly. It will LOOK like it connected, but it'll fully atttach only on one side. Apparently, this is because one particular, very basic subroutine starts to puke when it has to decide which of two interfaces it should connect to.

Luckily, there's a SOLUTION:

Try building the conveyor line up to ~3 single conveyor pieces from your chose porthole on the large container. Bridge the gap with two conveyor-connectors, one at the large container, one at the end of the line. The connection will be made when the two conveyor-connectors are less than 1.5 single conveyor pieces apart (then the connectors will light up).

That should do the trick - this is a really old bug/feature, and if it were fixable without something else going tits-up, they'd have done it by now. It also affects armorpieces, wallpieces etc.

Try to plan ahead, such that you always build from beginning to end, and when that's not possible, throw in two connectors and move on.

Cheers,
Andy

[RAGE]

Originally posted by Caralyss:

I used a mining rig for the first time today and noticed on accessing the display panel it had a tick box lower left to 'send resources to attacked box when full'. I would assume that means it needs a direct connection to storage, and presumably a loop won't work. BUT I am a newb. Hopefully one of the 'veteren' players will know better.

It's a stopgap measure to prevent overspilling.

The mining rig will mine until its internal storage is full, and then stop, even if you have additional storage units (large/small containers) attached to the rig. If you tick the box, it will continue mining and the 'overspill' will go to the attached storage.

That can, however, be undesirable - the mining rig is a dumb piece of metal, it will mine until it runs out of power or storage. ANY awailable storage - it doesn't care if it floods attached production units (printers, medbay, etc.), greenhouses etc.

When you want to automate production of building blocks, you won't be able to avoid ending up with "everything connected to everything" - so if you start the miner, slap yourself on the back and go on an extensive exploration tour, you might return to your entire base flooded with raw material.

That's why many people with larger bases prefer unchecking this box - one less thing to worry about.

[Old-gamer]

There is another thing to know about having a lot of large (or small) containers all connected on the same conveyor channel. If you get a significant qty of them connected together, opening them to see what is inside can take a longer time for the inventory screen to come up. That is because the game is reading the contents of every container in the loop before presenting the inventory screen to you.

Your original problem sounds like what Andy described above.

[Old-gamer]

Originally posted by Caralyss:

I used a mining rig for the first time today and noticed on accessing the display panel it had a tick box lower left to 'send resources to attacked box when full'. I would assume that means it needs a direct connection to storage, and presumably a loop won't work. BUT I am a newb. Hopefully one of the 'veteren' players will know better.

Good that you noticed that box. You can use it to select whether you want the auto-miner to retain all ores in just the miner's local inventory or pass ores on to a properly connected Container. If the box is unchecked, it will fill up its local inventory with ore and the miner will stop/full. If the box is checked, the miner will pass everything beyond its own local capacity to a connected container(s).

One thing to consider is that these auto-miners have no control over how much ore they send for storage(s). That means they will fill every possible vacant storage space of things that are in their particular conveyor loop.

[Carol]

My mining rig is not close to base (almost 2k away) so I copied an idea off the workshop by attaching small storage boxes and solar power. So it can't flood my base storage :)

[Guardsix6]

I've got all the check boxes checked on and they have been when I started up the mining rig. That still doesn't do anything. The rig just stops working when it's full even though it's now connected to a large storage box.

I tried the two connector thing and that doesn't do anything either. Now I'm at another base and I can't get water pumps to pump water to a small storage box connected to it through conveyors. The water pumps are down in a hole and the storage boxes are up on the ground almost just above the pumps.

I must not be living right cause none of this conveyor to storage seems to be working for me!

[Aieonae]

Pretty sure, it just snap to the other supporting parts, do make sure the conveyor is actually snap onto the desire conveyor ends.

Generally, I would not advise having too many large container connect together for the moment, doing BCP inventory control can help thou.

My observation was when combining large beyond the count of 10s, which often pull the plug and crash the game.

-above statement is based on local observation with no involvement of any theories-

[darryl]

try putting a small storage box on top on the mining rig first then pipe it to a large one i had to do that to get mine working

[Old-gamer]

It is basically a problem that has been with us for a long time in this game. The simple act of connecting conveyors from one source to another should work. But this game will allow you to make those connections (or alter them) and they will look like they are connected when they are not. That is why people will tell you to start at one end and rework your way to the other with a fresh run to eliminate the connection that looks right, but in fact is not passing material through. Using the small container (as suggested above) is another tool that people use to deal with the problem.

When I encounter the problem, it is usually because I needed to make a change in an existing pipeline that then triggers the problem. So, I've learned to just start a fresh run from the receiving container to the auto-miner and then connect the auto-miner to that run of conveyors as the final connection.